Magical Connection

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My Daily Life with Housemates

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M Y DA ILY L IFE W IT H HOUS EMATES

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Intro HOUSEMATE a person who is not part of the same family, but with whom one shares a house

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There are four of us living together— Phoebe, Ming, Wen and me. Phoebe is reliable, considerate and knowledgeable. Ming is lively, simple and cute.

Wen is warm-hearted, silly and funny.

As for me, they think I am direct, creative and also meticulous. Each of us is unique and special. We cook, play and study. Even though we have different characters and different habits, we can still get along and have fun. For this book, I documented one of our typical Saturdays, and also shared some of my reflections on the moments between us.

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Morning !

M Y DA ILY L IFE W IT H HOUS EMATES

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April

2018

This is an ordinary Saturday morning. I wake up to a little bit of noise in the kitchen. It seems like somebody washes the dishes in the kitchen and then uses the microwave. I guess someone got up early this morning and prepared her breakfast. I get up from my bed and want to see who is the first person getting up this Saturday morning, since all of us are super lazy during the weekend.

Saturday

Sunny

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I open my bedroom door, and see Ming standing at the stove, preparing her breakfast. I walk towards her and say, “Morning.”

09:40AM

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She doesn’t reply to me immediately, and stares at my hair for a second, and asks me, “What happened to your hair?”

I say, “I have no idea.” And we both laugh. I look at her breakfast.

It is simply a salad and a bowl of noodles. This is exactly what her lifestyle looks like—easy, simple and direct.

MAGI CA L CON N ECT I ON

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Wuhan Hubei China

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10:00AM After Ming goes back her bedroom, I start preparing my breakfast. No one else gets up until now.

I am alone in the kitchen and decide to cook some noodles. I normally eat bread in the morning, but today I want a change and try something new.

That is also my way of living.

Sometimes I am willing to try something different in order to taste different flavors of life.

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Stacy 04:00 PM

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Chibi Hubei China

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Phoebe wakes up. She goes to the bathroom and takes a shower first, and she hums a wandering tune while she makes her breakfast.

11:00AM Her breakfast is different than ours because she has a higher standard for herself. Even if she only makes a salad, she sets every detail up perfectly.

Yes, today she makes a salad. As I thought, after she cuts avocados evenly, she puts salad dressing on the top beautifully. Meanwhile, she serves a bowl of fresh blueberries and a cup of coffee for herself.

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Sichuan Chengdu China

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After she finishes everything, she gives me a taste to see if it is bland or not. That reminds me of when I ask Phoebe to help me taste the dishes I make every single time to ensure the flavor is good enough.

This is kind of a philosophy of life, isn’t it? The player sees less clearly than the bystanders.

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Wen is the last person to get up. She is the laziest one among the four of us. She just simply grabs a small cake as her breakfast, well‌lunch.

Her lifestyle is simple, too. She eats her food absentmindedly and always seems like she is thinking about something else. I guess her food is not that tasty, and she eats it because she is hungry.

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Wen

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Harbin Heilongjiang China

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She only gets excited and pays attention to the food when Phoebe cooks for her, and if Phoebe cooks it, that means it’s tasty. This is Wen. I can easily see all her pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy on her face.

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I think, if everyone I meet in my life could be that real, I would appreciate each of them.

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Brainstorming Game

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01:00PM Because of this project, I want to investigate and explore more about how we feel and think about each other, so I gather my housemates together to do a quick brainstorming game. This is our first time playing brainstorming game. I find a board, and divide it into four sections, one for each of us. I ask them to come up with some keywords for the three sections. Each section represents a housemate. We are eager to see what words describe us. I even put some light music on to heighten the atmosphere.

Brainstorming Game

I notice that all of them take this very seriously and keep silent all the time until they finish the whole thing. They snicker when they write some certain words, and some of them keep using a dictionary to translate some words or phrases from Chinese to English. They feel some meanings of words are very hard to express in English.

Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. In other words, brainstorming is a situation where a group of people meet to generate new ideas and solutions around a specific domain of interest by removing inhibitions. People are able to think more freely and they suggest many spontaneous new ideas as possible. All the ideas are noted down and are not criticized and after brainstorming session the ideas are evaluated. The term was popularized by ALEX FAICKNEY OSBORN in the 1953 book APPLIED IMAGINATION. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming

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After the brainstorming game, we start to recall our first impressions of each other. I say I didn’t have a good impression of Wen when I saw her for the first time, and Wen says she didn’t have a good impression of Ming. Ming asks why, and Wen says she thought Ming looked rebellious since she wore a pair of high-heel slippers and a sexy black sun-top when she met her the first time.

However, as time went by, Wen changed her mind, and she thought Ming was a simple and silly girl. Ming laughs, and all of us laughs too.

Chatting and

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Laughing 03:00 PM

This is funny, I think a lot people tend to judge others by their first impressions. Even though we know this is too biased, we still can’t help but judge people in this way.

We need to remind ourselves all the time that some people have plain-looking exteriors, but they have beautiful hearts inside.

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Trip to the Supermarket

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Since we don’t have enough ingredients and materials to cook for the following week, we decide to go to the supermarket together and get some. It’s always a pleasure to go to the supermarket with my lovely housemates.

Wen directly heads to the quickfrozen food section immediately after walking through the entrance, and she especially loves frozen dumplings. Meanwhile, Phoebe and Ming go to the dried-noodle section without any hesitation.

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For me, I just walk around and wonder what I need, while at the same time feeling like I don’t really need anything.

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In the end, all of us buy a lot.

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10:00 AM

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2:20PM We’re still in the supermarket.

Phoebe says she is going to make Mango Mochi for us tonight, and we all feel excited about it. Wen thinks that she can’t take Phoebe’s food for free and give nothing back to her, so she decides to fry beef steak for us. However, Ming and I still don’t have any ideas about what we should cook tonight.

After we walk into the meat section, I see some trotters, and I think perhaps I can cook this for them.

Phoebe noticed my hesitation, so she suggests that I cook Lotus Root and Trotter Soup which is super delicious. I listen to her advice and find lotus root right away.

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2:40PM When we all reconvene to checkout, Ming still doesn’t know what she needs to cook for us tonight.

We notice that no one is making a starch, so she goes back to find some wide noodles and decides to cook wide stir-fried noodles for us.

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In the end, all of us buy a lot. I think that sometimes when we don’t need something, our closet friend’s can influence our minds by way of suggestions, causing us to change our mind quickly. This is how we maintain our relationships and create a great harmony—listening, compromising and cooperating.

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Lessons To Learn

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3:00PM We go back home. All of us are exhausted. After a while, we start to organize our stuff—Phoebe puts quick-frozen food into the refrigerator; Ming takes everything out from the shopping bags; Wen tries to put dried-noodles into her own little noodle bottle.

I start to clean the trotters and lotus roots.

Hey! Be Careful.

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However, this moment of peace is broken by Wen’s screaming. We all look at her and want to know what happened, and it turns out that her noodles fell on the floor. We roll our eyes and turn back to doing our own thing. We are not surprised by her behavior at all since we all have gotten used to each other. No one helps her pick up the noodles. She doesn’t ask for help since she knows she can fix it, and she doesn’t want to bother others because of her silly mistakes.

This is Wen. Even though she knows that we are close friends, she still wants to keep independence somehow. What’s more, a long-lasting relationship builds upon understanding.

MAGI CA L CON N ECT I ON

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Help.

Help.

Help.

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3:50PM There are only Phoebe and I in the kitchen now. She is preparing her ingredients for the Mango Mochi, and I am preparing the ingredients for the Lotus Root and Trotter Soup.

After I washed all the lotus roots, I start to peel the surface off and chop them up. Since I need to prepare enough ingredients for four of us, I have to peel and chop a lot of lotus roots.

Phoebe notices that this is a laborious task for me, and the other two are playing video games instead of helping me out. This situation annoys her, so she shouts towards them and asks them to help me out.

Afterward, Wen and Ming feel guilty and come to help us. With their help, I easily finished the whole thing. Now I understand that many hands make heavy work light.

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06:00 PM

Smoke detectors in the house are ringing. We all come out from our bedrooms and wonder what happened outside. As a result, Phoebe’s pot gets burnt. What’s worse, this is Ming’s pot that Phoebe borrowed before. Ming, Wen and I are all surprised by Phoebe’s mistake since she rarely makes mistakes on her cooking, especially for this a sort of low-level mistake.

4:30PM Fire!

Fire!

Fire!

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She sincerely says sorry to Ming and explains that she steamed sticky rice, flour and coconut water together in the pot, but there is not enough water to steam, so the pot got burnt. Ming forgives Phoebe, and Wen and I comfort her upset feeling. After a while, Phoebe decides to make Mochi again.

Through this small thing, I realize if we can tolerate others’ mistakes, and forgive people easily just like Ming does, the harmony and peace in our house will never go away.

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Wen is not home because a friend asked her out. Now only three of us are in the house. Ming starts to cook noodles for us. While she slices the onions, the chopping board that she is using is not stable enough, so she cuts one of her fingers by accident. Ming screams.

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Hey,

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Smile.

I help her clean the wound and put a bandage on it. Phoebe doesn’t want to see Ming ’s unhappy face, so she draws a small smiley face on her bandage. I want Ming to feel happy too, so I draw another face on the other side of the bandage. As a result, we all laughs.

03:00 PM

Suddenly, there is a saying on the tip of my tongue—treat others as you want to be treated. Yes, we all need a sense of sympathy to engender much more love from the bottom of our hearts.

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Dinner Time!

After a series of episodes, we are finally able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We feel satisfied and excited.

It is not just because we can enjoy the food we made, but more important than that— to achieve the same goal, we help each other, support each other and complete each other.

Each of us is indispensable during the process of cooperation. This is what I’ve learned from my dear housemates. Thank you all.

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Book designed by Wei (Stacy) Huang Email: stacyvv94@gmail.com Printing and binding by Wei (Stacy) Huang in Spring 2018 Paper: Red River Paper 60lb. Polar Matte C2S Printer: Epson Stylus Pro 3880 Typeface: Knockout Knockout is a sans-serif typeface designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones.

It was originally released through H&FJ in 1994.

Typeface: Sentinel Sentinel is a serif typeface designed by Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones.

It was originally released through H&FJ in 2009. Š 2018 Wei (Stacy) Huang All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission of the copyright holder.

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